At the two level continued.

Looking at the responses now posted, I’m surprised at how many people knew they had specific definitions. I think my partnership would have inferred from general principles a meaning, and in fact this would have meant penalties.

This bidding problem was given to me by Ben Thompson, so I thought I’d let him tell the story of what happened….

Bill and I kind of accidentally co-ordinated on something sensible.

I had xxx xx xxxx K10xx. It was week 1 of the Board a Match, so just like pairs, and we were Red vs Green. I figured if we were going minus doubled, we were screwed, and if we were going minus it didn’t really matter if was going to be 200 or 2000.

So I redoubled. I thought either they get scared and run, or Bill figures out logically that I’m scared and he runs. Either way, I’m unlikely to be worse off and I might be heaps better off.

The 2nd option is the niftier bit. Logically, there’s not much value in sending back 2NT for money. If 2NTX is making, you already have a highly excellent score. Sending it back might be the very last thing you want to do, because they may well be doubling based on fit (which was actually kinda sorta the case – he had Qxx heart and a good hand), which they may run to profitably if you scare them off. That’s true at pretty much all forms of scoring, but perhaps more at MPs than IMPs (at IMPs, +880/+1280 is only a few imps better than +690/+890 because you’re playing a +100 type hand).

Bill was looking at Kxx Ax AKJxx xxx and figured (a) I should be redoubling out of fear rather than greed and (b) 3D is much lower volume than 2NTXX. That’s a thing – we try to avoid playing for big stakes on small hands. So he bid 3D. They competed to 3H, made 170 and we survived the experience.